One Party Rule Quotes

“Because sustaining civic feeling is so difficult, democracies are subject to entropy. When the bond of citizenship is badly cast or has been allowed to weaken, there is a natural tendency for subpolitical attachments to become paramount in people's minds. We see this in every failed American effort to export democracy abroad. And we are also seeing it in Eastern Europe today, a particularly tragic development. Within a few years after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, democratic institutions were established there. But not a sense of shared citizenship, which is the work of generations. Democracies without democrats do not last. They decay, into oligarchy, theocracy, ethnic nationalism, tribalism, authoritarian one-party rule, or some combination of these.”
― Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics

“It was indeed clear, as the defenders of party unity pointed out, that under a one-party system separate groups within the party were bound to become the mouthpieces of all social forces which would in the old days have formed parties of their own: hence, if 'factions' were allowed, there would virtually be a multi-party system. The inevitable conclusion was that a party ruling despotically must itself be despotically ruled, and that, having destroyed democratic institutions in society at large, it was idle to think of preserving them within the party, let alone for the benefit of the whole working class.”
― Leszek Kołakowski, Main Currents Of Marxism: The Founders, The Golden Age, The Breakdown